The present invention relates to a sealing device particularly usable in ski boots comprising a shell provided with overlapping flaps.
The need to limit water infiltration inside the ski boot shell during sports practice is strongly felt. It has in fact been observed that the overlap of the flaps is never such as to eliminate water infiltrations inside the boot.
The flaps are in fact made of relatively rigid material and are subject, during use, to mutual sliding movements which form small gaps especially along the corners of the flaps.
In order to obviate these drawbacks it is known to apply, especially at the transverse edges of the flaps, a pad made of rubber or plastics, the purpose of which is to create a mechanical obstacle to the passage of water from the tip to the flaps during sports practice.
Sealing devices are also known which are constituted by two separate inserts separately applied on different edges of the flaps of the shell; one of the two inserts can be arranged at a longitudinal edge of a flap.
The second insert is in turn constituted by two parts: one can be inserted at the transverse edges of the flaps of the shell, and the other part is associable transversely to the first part toward the tip of the boot.
Even this known solution, described in the Italian patent no. 1,039,942 filed on Jul. 18, 1975, has drawbacks: first of all three components are involved which must be partially assembled together and to the shell, and furthermore the interaction of all of these components with each other and with the flaps does not ensure optimum watertightness between them in any case.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,597,862 discloses a ski boot having a waterproof bat tongue 57 which is however interacting only with the edges of the flaps.